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Newsweek
ASIAN OF THE YEAR
Anwar: The Rebel Son
On trial, Anwar Ibrahim ignites a struggle for Malaysia's future.
By Dorinda Elliott
Anwar Ibrahim, prisoner, realizes that he is fighting the battle of his
life but Anwar Ibrahim, political
pro, knows how to play it cool. During a break in his trial for sodomy
and corruption, Malaysia's
former deputyprime minister chats and jokes easily. The black eye that
police gave him in custody
has healed, and Anwar is dressed as if for a day at the office in his
crisp white shirt, well-pressed
trousers and black tasseled loafers. Hemunches on dried dates brought
by supporters and offers
them around including to his guard, who declines. With a grin, Anwar
quotes Mahatma Gandhi's
philosophy of sharing with everybody. "You see, my philosophyis
different from the boss's," he says.
"The boss" is Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who sacked him in
September. "His philosophy
ofeconomic development is one for you," Anwar says, handing out a
date,"and six for me!" His
supporters roar with laughter; even the guard cracksa smile.
Anwar, of course, is not in charge at all. Mahathir, who has ruled
Malaysia for 17 years, producing
rapid growth with an authoritarian hand, is running this show. Even
before Anwar was charged with
sodomy and corruption, Mahathir's supporters had practically convicted
him with a barrage
ofaccusations in the Malaysian press. In a Clintonesque turn of events
last week, prosecution
lawyers produced a mattress that they said was stainedwith Anwar's
semen to supposedly prove his
misconduct. If he is found guilty, Anwar could spend as long as 20
years in prison.
Ugly as the trial is, Malaysians know the
real fight is in the political arena. It is
about the wrath of a conservative old
man and the liberal protégé whodared to
challenge him. It is about the clash
between a rebel fighting thecolonial
demons of yesteryear and his would-be
successor, a man of the world who
espouses universal values and the global
village. Anwar is no Mahatma Gandhi.
He is a wily, determined politician
fighting not just for survival but for
power. It is the larger battle that he
personifies — betweenold and new
politics in East Asia, authoritarian and
democratic governments, protected and
open economies — that makes him
NEWSWEEK's Asian of the Year.
"This is about more than just
Anwar.Democracy is beginning to
awaken in this country," says Balwant
Singh Sidhu, a lawyer connected to
Anwar's team. "The man in the street is
waking up to the rights of individuals and
the system of justice in this country."
Anwar would be glad to hear that. Ever since his boyhood days in the
dirt-poor Cherok Tokun
kampung, or village, where he grew up, Anwar has preached that
education can be the Malays'
salvation. "We always felt he was gifted, so we followed him," says
Fazila, 48, a cousin who grew
up next door. "We were so proud, but now we are crying." Anwar's
father, a hospital technician
who became a member of Parliament, taught him to study hard. "He didn't
mingle with the bad hats
in town," says a local religious leader. "He always wanted to talk to
the village elders and learn from
them." In the early years of independence, Anwar tested into the elite
Malay College boarding
school, known as the Eton of the East. He was the first boy from his
kampung to make it to
university.
For a young Malay scholar, those were exciting political times. The
British colonial masters had
done little for the Malays, instead cultivating the Malaysian Chinese
as a business class and docile
support base. Most Malays were still living in abject poverty. Anwar
organized debates to discuss
social work and the importance of education. According to a local
religious instructor, he was
obsessed with the use of Islam as an educational tool. By the time
Anwar went to university, the
country was reeling from race riots in 1969 between poor Malays and the
well-to-do Malaysian
Chinese who controlled the economy. "The Malay community felt left out
of mainstream
development," says Chandra Muzaffar, a sociologist who recently joined
Malaysia's reform
movement. "It was a time of real soul-searching."
Anwar became a radical student leader, championing Malay interests like
fighting poverty. He was
attracted to the ideas of a tough-minded young politician, Mahathir
Mohamad, who had just been
expelled from the ruling party for opposing the party president.
Mahathir then wrote the "Malay
Dilemma," arguing the need to overcome passive traditions and develop a
new generation of
educated, enterprising Malays. Anwar distributed the book, and that was
the beginning of a long
and close relationship.
The young Anwar was just as passionate. In 1974 he was arrested during
a protest against
government neglect of poor peasants and spent two years in jail. Later,
as head of an
education-oriented Islamic organization called ABIM, Anwar spoke out
for democracy and led a
successful fight against a government move to tighten controls on
political activists.
It came as a shock to Anwar's liberal supporters when in 1982 he did an
about-face and joined the
ruling party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). Mahathir,
who had rejoined the
party and just taken over as prime minister, had lured Anwar into the
establishment. "It was
unthinkable," says current ABIM president Ahmad Azam Abdul Rahman.
"[Anwar] explained that
... it was time to manifest (Islam's) ideals through power." Anwar's
wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail,
an ophthalmologist trained in Ireland, says the decision to join the
government was the most difficult
moment in Anwar's career. "Anwar is very pragmatic, and he saw UMNO as
a machine that works
to fight for his ideals," she says. "He had to go somewhere, otherwise
he'd just be barking outside
and not getting anywhere."
Some Chinese and Indian Malaysians have been alienated by Anwar's
Islamic bent. His wife wears
the Islamic tudung scarf; at his house, women supporters covered from
head to toe often stop by to
pray, bowing their heads to the floor. Anwar has encouraged the spread
of Islamic studies and
helped introduce an Islamic banking system that avoids "interest rates"
by adding a surcharge to
loans. Intellectual supporters insist that Anwar's Islam is a tolerant
philosophy. "He wanted to create
an Islamic model that can engage with modernization and other
religions," says ABIM's Ahmad
Azam, who was detained and interrogated for 10 days after Anwar's
arrest. As Anwar has risen
through the system, "his level of tolerance and understanding of
diversity have grown."
Inside the government, Anwar was an outsider, viewed as a radical
interloper by longtime party
hacks. He maneuvered for advantage with the help of Mahathir, bypassing
more senior politicians
and earning many enemies along the way. Some old friends say he went
along with the worst of
Mahathir's excesses. "He wanted to change the system," says Hishammudin
Rais, a filmmaker who
was a student activist with him in the 1970s, "but it was bigger than
he was." In the late 1980s,
Anwar kept silent during a judicial crisis, when it was charged that
political pressure led to the
resignation of several Supreme Court judges. When Mahathir launched
Operation Wild Grass,
leading to the arrest of 106 dissidents in 1987, Anwar did nothing. "If
he had spoken out, he would
have been crushed much sooner," says one close aide. Wife Azizah
agrees: "Even now, all his
strength was still not enough."
Anwar's critics argue that he played crony politics, too. Tycoons
betting he would someday be in
power financed a pro-Anwar think tank. With a phone call or two from
the Ministry of Finance,
headed by Anwar, critics say, they got licenses and bank loans. But
even Anwar's opponents
concede that such favoritism was on a tiny scale compared with
Mahathir's crony system. Mahathir
had built much of Malaysia's booming economy on patronage. Loyal
businessmen won privatization
deals and contracts that made them multimillionaires overnight. Anwar,
by contrast, tried to play the
game without unseemly excesses. He issued a decree to colleagues that
they should reject all
applications for special share allocations and projects from his
relatives. In the kampung, his cousins
live in a ramshackle house, with greasy rags and dead roaches on the
kitchen floor and simple
wooden furniture in the tiny living room. A few years ago Anwar tried
to talk cousin Zulkiefli, 40,
out of launching a trading business. "There's too much hanky-panky in
business," Anwar told him.
"And you'll have to take out loans. Why do you need this trouble?" It
was Anwar's indirect way of
saying he wouldn't offer any favors. "He had all the opportunity to
abuse power and give money to
us, but he didn't," says Zulkiefli. "Sometimes we even thought, 'Why
doesn't he help?' " His sister's
husband, Ismail Aziz, who runs a food stall, rarely even told strangers
that he was Anwar's relative.
"If we could drive around in a fancy Mercedes, then it might be worth
saying it," he says. "But
nobody would believe us, so why bother?"
Anwar actually started staking out his differences with Mahathir five
years ago, when he became
deputy prime minister. In carefully calibrated speeches written by a
team of liberal intellectuals,
Anwar spoke of his own ideals. Words like civil society, universal
values and freedom crept into his
messages. Anwar assigned his team to help put together a book called
"Asian Renaissance," a
counterargument to Mahathir's "Asian values," the notion that Western
democracy is inappropriate
for Asia. Anwar argued that Asian philosophers, from Confucius to
Pakistani philosopher-poet
Mohammad Iqbal and Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, believed in human
liberties and
democracy. But Anwar wanted to make his mark without offending his
patron. "He would send us
off to find books in his library," says one speechwriter, "all the
while worrying what the old man
would think. Could he handle the words 'civil society'? He really
valued his relationship with
Mahathir."
Asia's financial crisis put further strains on the relationship. At the
World Bank meeting in Hong
Kong in September 1997, when Mahathir railed against the evils of
Western speculators, Anwar
publicly contradicted him in hopes of stopping the Malaysian currency's
plunge. Anwar opposed
Mahathir's idea of loosening credit to spur a recovery, instead
supporting a tough monetary policy
that would allow bankrupt crony companies to collapse. "He wanted to
use the financial crisis to
destroy Mahathir's cronies," says one supporter. Anwar attempted to
block Mahathir's moves to
bail out huge, overextended companies run by his friends.
Anwar's advisers kept urging him to push harder for change. At last
spring's UMNO conference,
the rift between Mahathir and Anwar broke into the open. A book called
"Fifty Reasons Why
Anwar Cannot Become Prime Minister," which listed everything from
sodomy to spying, was
deposited in each delegate's package, even though Anwar had won a court
order banning its
distribution. Anwar's aides pushed him to break with Mahathir. "We
said, look, if you don't do it,
your supporters will say 'What's the use of Anwar, if he does nothing?'
" says one associate. Still,
Anwar resisted. "He said, 'Listen, I'm the politician here'." It was
only when Mahathir attacked
head-on that Anwar took his cause to the streets. "I said to Mahathir
'I treat you like a father',"
Anwar said after he was sacked. "But he certainly has not reciprocated
that feeling."
The role of dutiful son has never quite suited Anwar. He is an
ambitious politician who miscalculated
and fell from grace. But his spirits are high. In the courtroom, asked
if he will keep up the fight, he
raises his fist in the air with a smile. His wife says he is rereading
George Orwell's "Animal Farm"
and a biography of Abraham Lincoln in jail. "Prison is no bed of
roses," Anwar himself tells a
NEWSWEEK correspondent. Anwar's children miss the irrepressible father
who sings opera in the
mornings and playfully cheats at cards. "Did Dr. M. take away Papa's
name tag so he can't go to
work anymore?" his 6-year-old asked recently. He did. But in the
meantime, Anwar has changed
his country — and perhaps helped lead Asia into a more open era in the
process. "We are
witnessing the transformation of our political culture," says ABIM's
Ahmad Azam. "Anwar is the
sacrificial lamb." Not quite: this lamb is still alive and kicking.
Newsweek International, Dec. 28, 1998/Jan. 4, 1999
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